Cheerful Abundance

a field notebook of suburban life

All Birthdays are cancelled

Nobody gets a birthday in this household anymore – they are cursed for us! G. is in the hospital, full of bacteria apparently, and sporting a fever of a 105, which is appropriate, given that that is the current temperature in Chicago, and in our apartment. It is wickedly difficult to bring down someone’s temperature when the air temp is that high, and she was pretty miserable this week – big molar coming in, nauseated from her new medication, and sporting a big fever. So now she is in the hospital, charming doctors and screaming her head off, and hopefully getting better.

Poor baby. I think we are going to cancel all scheduled festivities this weekend, and spend a quiet, family weekend snuggled up together in bed, in front of the air conditioner. No doubt, someone will throw up. That’s the kind of week it has been. We will leave you to guess who.

Not all the news is bad – big, big milestones hit last week (pre-bacterial infections), lots of cute photos to come, and hey – we are on a first name basis with the valet parking attendant at the hospital, so its not all bad. And despite the miserableness that is a baby in the emergency room, we also got some good news – G is officially over 20lbs. 5 oz over, to be precise. Which isn’t much to weigh, for a toddler, but 20lbs is the demarcation line for all sorts of things. 20lbs is the mystical weight at which the human body suddenly becomes better able to handle viruses and infections. 20lbs is a baby strong enough to weather an illness without it turning into a deadly crisis. Its a big deal, for internationally adopted kids, who generally do not have healthful starts in life, to break the 20lb mark. Its a really, really beautiful milestone.